


Attack on the Rings

by WhiteHairedBoy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, International Fanworks Day 2016
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 21:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6026074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteHairedBoy/pseuds/WhiteHairedBoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin enters in a strange-looking bookshop and finds an even stranger book...<br/>The story of how the SNK characters became fans of LOTR.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Attack on the Rings

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, I know what AO3 had proposed for the IFD was a short work, but… I started this and I just couldn’t stop writing (I’m a HUGE fan of both AOT and LOTR). If you like it I could even continue it!  
> Also, this is my first fanfic, so, if you have any comments or suggestions (even critics), don't be shy!

Armin was slowly walking down the main street of the town, lazily looking around. Sasha and Jean had been sent there to buy goods for the whole squad, and he had offered to accompany them just to take a walk around the small city. 

Since he had entered the survey corps, he relinquished the possibilities he had to take glimpses of normal lives. Calm and familiar atmospheres like the one in the town reminded him that there were still people that conducted normal lives, like the one he had before the apparition of the colossal titan.

The blonde bowl of hair kept wandering until its owner noticed an old sign with the word "bookshop" written on it, even though it was so ruined most of the letters weren't even legible anymore. Under it there were a wooden door in the same conditions of the sign and some small windows completely dirty. Armin suspected that the layer of dust on them was so thick that light barely entered the shop even during the brightest of days.  
The vision was so peculiar it instilled in the boy a burning curiosity: it gave off an old a mysterious aura; and he had always been an affectionate visitor of bookshops and libraries anyways. Since he found himself with nothing to do and some money in his pockets, he decided to enter and take a look.

The inside was cosier than the blond expected, but reflected perfectly the impression the outside gave. It took his eyes a moment to get used to the dim light in the shop, but when they finally did he made out a human form to his left, slumped behind a desk. After a while he assumed the man was sleeping, so he turned to his right to see lines and lines of shelves full of yellow and dusty books. Some were even on the ground, in ordered piles scattered all around the place in a way that gave the idea of some kind of disordered order that probably made sense in the mind of the person that had arranged them, but seemed only casual to him.

Armin noticed that not all of the shop was filled with darkness. The dirty windows, strangely enough, projected beams of light in the room, that lightened up the small particles of dust in the air creating a dream like atmosphere. Reached by the sun rays, he noticed that something, under a particularly big mountain of books, was shining. The boy crouched and delicately removed the volumes that covered what had caught his attention: it was an enormous and beautiful book, relegated in a bright red leather, and on its front there were only two symbols made up of a silver like material that he had never seen before. Any normal metal would have deteriorated, or would at least have become opaque, since it looked like the book hadn't been cleaned in ages, but the letters kept shining, even as he moved the book in the shadows of the shelves.  
On the top of the cover there was an eight-pointed star that looked like a shine of light, while at the bottom there were two "B"s, presumably the initials of the author. Beautiful marks that remembered the branches of trees framed them. He opened the strange book, and was presented with this text on the first page:

 

My Diary. My Unexpected Journey. There and Back Again. And  
What Happened After.  
Adventures of Five Hobbits. The Tale of the Great Ring, compiled by  
Bilbo Baggins from his own observations and the accounts of his friends.  
What we did in the War of the Ring. 

THE DOWNFALL  
OF THE  
LORD OF THE RINGS  
AND THE  
RETURN OF THE KING  
(as seen by the Little People; being the memoirs of Bilbo and  
Frodo of the Shire, supplemented by the accounts of their friends  
and the learning of the Wise.)

Together with extracts from Books of Lore translated by Bilbo  
in Rivendell.

Now the blond was downright intrigued. He started scrolling through the pages furiously, skipping two or three introductions (If his usual self could have seen him he would have kicked himself. Armin never skipped introductions, for how boring they could be), and then he stopped, the first page of the first chapter towering in front of him.  
"In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit."...

\---

The boy lifted his head up. The last rays of light of the evening flowed through the window to rain on his small figure sitting on the ground in a pool of books. He raised rapidly on his knees and stood up, wobbling. He hadn't noticed the time passing by, and now he had to reach Jean and Sash as fast as he could. He started heading towards the entrance of the shop, still holding the book to his heart, when he stopped abruptly.

Armin didn't know what to do, for once in his life. That book was surely one of the prohibited ones, talking about ancient times and lands outside of the walls. The only reason it had been saved was because it had been forgotten in that small bookshop. Exiting that shop with that book was dangerous, for the both of them: outside of that small and protected piece of world keeping it a secret would have been quite a task. And, even before that, if he told the owner he had found it, let alone read it, it would surely be destroyed and he would have found himself in huge trouble. He looked over the man that was still sleeping behind the desk. He should have left the book there and run away, but... The volume he held in his hands narrated grand and epic stories that he knew he couldn't let be forgotten. It talked about the outside world and of an era that had long passed away, of dragon and dwarves, hobbits and elves, wizards and powerful, unknown creatures. 

The blonde had taken his decision. He resumed his walking, this time more slowly and quietly, and passed the owner of the shop. After opening the wooden door he rushed outside and ran towards the outside of the town like it's life depended on it, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and the bookstore. He stopped only when he had no oxygen left and his lungs were burning for the lack of air. Then, folded in two and still panting, he realized what he had done. He, Armin, the irreprehensible, had just sneaked into a bookshop, found (and read) a forbidden book and then ran away with it. Without paying. He looked around, waiting for a lighting to suddenly come down from the sky and struck him, but that didn't happen. For the moment, he thought. 

Realizing he had forgotten Jean and Sasha again, he started striding towards the stables in which they had left their horses and had agreed to use as meeting point. 

\---

"I knew it was a bad idea to leave Armin alone! Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!" Jean kept muttering, leaning over the packs of supplies. He was scared out of his mind, terrified of what Eren and Mikasa would have done to him if something happened to their best friend. Sasha, on the other hand, was completely relaxed, eating some of the bread they had bought... Wait, what? 

"Sasha, stop!" He said, looking at his dark haired friend. "That's the food we are supposed to bring back for everyone. You are not supposed to eat it NOW! Plus, if the corporal notices something is missing, he'll kill us." The girl looked at him with an apologetic smile on her face. "Forry Jean... I was juft so hungry, and it fmelled delicious!" He turned around, a bit disgusted, when crumbs of bread started flying from her mouth. "Don't eat with your mouth full! I mean... Don't talk, don't talk! Besides, we have more important things to do. Like search for..." 

He was interrupted by a distant voice: "Jean! Sasha! Sorry I'm late!"  
The horse... Sorry, I meant the boy. It's easy to get confused, you know? So, the boy WITH THE HORSE FACE turned around to see a blonde bowl of hair run towards them. "Armin! You stupid..." 

“I’m sorry! I’m really, really sorry!” repeated the newcomer, panting.  
“I just… completely lost track of time. Could you please avoid telling captain Levi about this?”

At this point he stared up at Jean with puppy eyes.  
“Ehm...” The tall boy didn’t know what to answer. He could get in huge trouble for this, but it was impossible to say no to Armin if he looked at you that way.

“Yeah, sure!” Sasha interrupted his thoughts, smiling brightly at the blonde.  
“But now we should really go. Come on!” 

\---

Jean kept brooding over what Armin had told him during the journey back. There was definitely something suspicious going on. For one, he had never lost track of time in the three years they had known each other. And for him to deliberately ask his friends to break the rules… plus he hadn’t putted down the object he had appeared with for an hour, now. It looked like a book, and, knowing Armin, it probably was one.

He looked at the other boy, who was watching the landscape with a strange look on his face, holding tight against his chest the mysterious book. Slowly, he neared himself to him, and, after some moments of silence, he spoke.

“Armin…” The blonde, hearing his name, winced, like if he had been brought back from distant fantasies. “What… what is that book?” Jean continued, quietly.  
Armin’s eyes grew big with surprise, then fear, followed by the most exited and ecstatic look that the other had ever seen on his face. He opened the book like a kid that is letting you know his biggest secret, and turned to the really confused boy near him. “THIS was the outside world." He said.


End file.
